PAL was the more sophisticated of the two, and for a time, and in some situations, it sometimes sucked less than NTSC.
In the very beginning the problems these two systems were designed to address were:
- cramming the color signal into the available bandwidth
- making a moving picture that wouldn't look like crap on a black and white television
- lowering the component count in color television sets.
That's all. There were no other lofty design considerations.
The color balance in NTSC sets drifted more than PAL -- thus the need for those old analog "tint" and "hue" controls, and the origin of the "Never The Same Color" joke. But PAL had it's own problems that couldn't be satisfied by twidling knobs.
Modern television sets have sophisticated filters and digital signal processors that are very good at extracting the proper pixels from a messy composite television signal, therefore the differences between PAL and NTSC are less important than they once were. Even frame rate differences can be compensated for with modern digital processing.
On inexpensive television sets I think the higher frame rate of NTSC (30 frames per second rather than 25) is less distracting. "PAL 60" is a strange and interesting brew, but pure digital video is better.
The picture quality and capabilities of almost any modern computer monitor far exceed those of the expensive studio monitors I used twenty five years ago.
The current situation with digital video standards is ugly and confused. Satellite, cable, internet, and DVD digital video formats will determine the quality of most television pictures. Traditional "broadcasters" will be marginalized. I don't believe "HDTV" will become popular until inexpensive DVD players are capable of HDTV quality.
So, to answer your question, the PAL / NTSC argument is archaic... but that's okay, I like it.
BTW, do you like 'fifties Fords or 'fifties Chevys?